Australian property portal Homely says it has a secret weapon against Domain and realestate.com.au, which it claims has helped it to climb the ranks as a major player in Australia’s property portal space.
Homely was launched ten years ago and was recently nominated as one of the world’s top 5 real estate apps as part of the coveted Webby Awards. Its co-founder Jason Spencer says the portal has a distinctive feature that sets it aside from its competitors.
“Almost 10 million Australians visited our site in the last 12 months looking for a home and that’s for one big reason…we have something realestate.com.au and Domain do not,” he boldy states.
Localised content
What Spencer is talking about are Homely’s street and suburb reviews. The company claims it is the only Australian real estate portal to offer local content and community collaboration,Q&A and local discussion forums that talk about what it’s like to live in a particular suburb.
Homely has patented its street and suburb review feature, and says it owns the largest collection of ‘What it’s like to live somewhere’ content in Australia.
“Homely is engaging people much earlier in the home buying and renting process than other real estate portals”, says its co-founder Adam Spencer.
“It’s taken many years but we now rank in the top three search results for over 90% of Australian suburb searches on Google. We’re the only portal in Australia that lets people research ratings and reviews to know what it’s like to live somewhere before buying or renting a home. It gives Homely a very unique customer acquisition strategy.”
The strategy is one that’s been adopted by U.S. portals Trulia and Zillow who offer similar community-centered content in order to fuel organic traffic growth.
” Our street and suburb reviews provide insights that homebuyers can use to make the smartest possible decisions about purchasing their most valuable asset,” Adam says. “We’re seeing tremendous growth in all areas of our business as we help millions of consumers connect with our real estate partner advertisers.”
Jason says Homely is looking to capitalise on its recent growth and is gearing up for a major marketing campaign to further showcase its unique content.
“It’s an exciting time for us at Homely,” he says. “The last 12 months have been a phenomenal growth period for us with record levels in all key metrics including traffic, leads, content and a 5th Webby nomination. We have had several approaches from major investors both here and overseas looking to get into the space and we look forwarding to making Homely Australia’s next household brand.”
